Seating assemblies for motor vehicles often employ a head restraint affixed to an upper portion of an upwardly extending seating assembly seatback. The primary function of such a head restraint is to provide an appropriate and often padded surface against which the back of an occupant's head might be restrained to prevent abrupt rearward motion of the occupant's head and injurious displacement of the upper cervical portion of the spine during a rear impact event. A head restraint thus protects the occupant from neck injuries in rear impact crashes.
In some seating assembly designs, the head restraint is fixed. However, head restraints function optimally when they are closest to the head and at a proper height relative the occupant, which is often difficult to achieve with fixed headrests in view of the wide variety of occupant sizes, while promoting the comfort of the occupant. In view of this shortcoming of fixed head restraints, other seating assembly designs employ a head restraint that is movable in the vertical direction relative the seating assembly seatback. However, in most instances, vertically movable head restraints are positioned sub-optimally relative their ability to provide an effective restraint. Also, in angular rear impacts, the occupant's head may not be properly restrained. An improvement over such head restraints was desired.